With apologies to the “applause” signs in Cygnet Theatre’s radio-style take on “A Christmas Carol,” there’s just something not quite so spooky about a Scrooge once removed.

As it did for six memorable seasons with its adaptation of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Cygnet has taken Charles Dickens’ tale of a tightwad for all time and styled it as a 1940s live broadcast, with playgoers sitting in as the studio audience.

This means the actors are all playing actors who are playing the story’s characters, with Tom Stephenson leading the way as an apparently crotchety Broadway star portraying the decidedly crotchety Ebenezer Scrooge.

Can Scrooge make his way past selfishness, miserdom and snarky mock-commercial breaks and into the arms of enlightenment, with the help of three ghosts and a whole host of whimsical sound effects?

Maybe more important: Can fans of Cygnet’s savvy ways with old-time radio drama find love with a whole new story? (Cue melodramatic organ flourish.)

Those longtime devotees should at least be pleased that the acting in Cygnet artistic director Sean Murray’s production remains top-rate. In fact, much of the cast returns from “Wonderful Life,” with Jonathan Dunn-Rankin again playing the golden-throated announcer for “WCYG” radio, Jason Connors adroitly handling the Foley audio effects, Melissa Fernandes sweetly voicing Tiny Tim, and the ever-chameleonic David McBean evoking Scrooge’s tormented late partner Jacob Marley and others. (All the actors take on multiple roles.)

Music director and composer Billy Thompson (who also handles the onstage piano-playing) underpins all this with beautifully harmonized, often haunting song interludes that help set the scenes’ emotional tenor.

But while it’s maybe not fair to keep comparing this show to “Wonderful Life,” there’s just something about Dickens’ more sobering saga that doesn’t lend itself quite so well to the radio-show conceit.

You want to be chilled by the harrowing Ghost of Christmas Future, but since that particular spirit doesn’t speak, the audience only witnesses its presence through sounds and Stephenson’s reactions. (Cygnet itself manifested the scariest-looking Future I’ve ever seen when it did a traditional “Christmas Carol” in 2008.)

The ‘40s setting also was a more organic fit for the adaptation of the Jimmy Stewart movie, which actually came out in 1946. Absent that context, it’s harder to argue for a real reason to give “Carol” the vintage-radio treatment. (And for a piece that’s so audio-centric, the accents are oddly unfocused: The very English Bob appears to have fathered a blended family of Britons and Yanks, while other characters go from Cockney clear to “Fargo.”)

The ad parodies are clever but lean a little too hard on the laugh lines (and, in the case of a plug for cheese balls, go on too long). But the production’s sound (Matt Lescault-Wood), lighting (R. Craig Wolf), costumes (Shirley Pierson) and set (Murray) are all polished, and Connors does some undeniably whizbang things with the audio effects. One favorite: A birdcage-like contraption played eerily with a bow.